Apr 2013 Issue - the Aberdeen Boat Club

Plan of a traditional Chinese sailing junkdown China’s eastern coast, aroundHainan Island and beyond, clear of alldangers, traced out by what were calledzhēnlù ( 針 路 , needle paths). Each leg ofone of these – recorded in memory, inchants, in route books and on rough routemaps – inhered a simple formula. Theformula ran “from A, steer direction x ;after y gēng ( 更 , or traditional 2.4 hourwatch), the ship reaches B”.By following the sequence of suchinstructions – the directions on any oneof the 48 on a Chinese compass card,like dīngwèi ( 丁 未 = 202.5 0 ) – a junk couldbe sailed safely down the coast to itsdestination clear of all danger.From all along this trunk route a vastnetwork spread out. The zhēnlù ran fromnavigational waypoint to navigationalwaypoint, each marking turning pointsfor the next leg and often also markingthe point where one turned towards thecoast into ports and navigable rivers.Other waypoints might mark a branchroute that led for offshore destinationsfrom Japan to Jakarta. From otherwaypoints the mariner would be guidedto an island or bay where good sheltercould be found for a night at anchor.The junks of Coasting Past very likelyused the same navigational techniques.After all, there’s nowhere on a sailingjunk to put a radar, an echo sounder, achart table and charts and so on. Evensupposing there had been the money tobuy such things, why would a traditionalnavigator, the hè zhǎng ( 荷 長 ), havebothered? Like the yottigators most of usare in our home waters, he knew wherehe was and how to get where he wasgoing because he’d been doing it half alifetime and more. The Mk I eyeball, aprodigious memory, a lead line in case ofdoubt and maybe a rutter (route book); thehè zhǎng was navigationally fully equipped.From what scholars have found,not all coastal junks would have carriedwritten navigational materials even inthe last half of the 20th century. Insteadmany – almost certainly the smallerones that plied shorter, local routesas those through Hong Kong waters –were navigated down their traditionalroutes from memorized data. This wasP.31